


Candy-Coated Wounds

by GoodJanet



Category: Gone With the Wind - All Media Types, Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Genre: Adultery, Angry Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Face Slapping, Hurt No Comfort, Mildly Dubious Consent, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Sex, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 22:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4723217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodJanet/pseuds/GoodJanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: A re-write of the Scarlett/Ashley paddock scene.</p><p>Scarlett finally gets exactly what she wants from Ashley, but the price isn't cheap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Candy-Coated Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration from this post: http://phoebe-tonkin.tumblr.com/post/128228399326/she-did-not-want-to-be-fair-although-she-knew

Even though she knows she looks wretched and smells worse than the muck they’re living in, Scarlett knows her beauty, her strength, and her charm will be her saving graces. With a carefully lilting voice and grabbing hands, she pulls Ashley close to her.

“Don’t you remember that day at Twelve Oaks?” she drawls. “Don’t you remember telling me that you loved me? That you needed me?”

She presses up against his warm, firm body and waits to hear the affirmations she’s been longing to hear for years. He has to say it. He just has to. She’d kidnap him herself and drag him all the way to Mexico by his boots if she needed to.

Quite unexpectedly, Ashley turns around in her arms and grips her shoulders in a way she is sure will leave bruises. She holds back a smile at the idea of ten blackberry kisses from Ashley peppering her creamy skin. And just what would everyone say when they saw those marks peep out from under a drooping collar? Scarlett shivers.

“You want me to leave my wife, leave my child, because of a silly commitment I made to you when you were still a child? Scarlett, you’re talking nonsense! You should know better, my darling. Please don’t ask me again.”

He sounds weary, which, Scarlett figures, means he’s open to suggestion. Now was the time to act.

“If you don’t want me, then let go of me! You talk of honor and rough me up like some field hand!” 

With surprising force, she knocks Ashley’s hands away, and he recoils like he’s been bitten. He looks confused and hurt and guilty.

“Scarlett, I—I never meant—”

“I know what you meant, Ashley Wilkes. You meant to hurt me, and it worked. If you really cared about me, you’d listen to me!”

“Scarlett, darling, I only want—”

“Melly can’t give you what you want. I know it, Pittypat knows it, damn well near the whole town knows it.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but I wish you’d stop trying to hurt me so. Please, dear.” He tentatively grasps her hand. “There’s no need for cruelty.”

She moves in close to him again. She reaches up a gentle hand to push an errant lock of hair back into place. His kind blue eyes shine with hurt, but there’s something else there. Perhaps a trace of the fire he exhibited just a few short minutes ago.

Scarlett goes in for the kill.

“I can have children, you know,” she murmurs, softly, innocently.

“Scarlett.”

“I’d give you beautiful babies, Ashley. Strong, handsome, beautiful babies to carry on your family name. Isn’t that what you want?”

Ashley is quiet for a good long moment. His hands at his sides twitch, and she hopes he’ll grab at her again. Scarlett wants nothing more than to jump in, to make him say something, anything, but she knows that waiting for someone to come around on their own was just as rewarding and offered the same result. It was all a matter of patience, and it all hinged on whatever Ashley decided to say (or do) next.

“Yes, Scarlett. It is what I want. It’s what any man would want,” he begins. “But if I can’t have children with my wife, and if god doesn’t want us to be blessed with them, I cannot, in good conscience, leave her to fend for herself, all alone in this cold, cruel world.”

Scarlett sees red. There is a terrible instance where she feels her face burn like banked embers, where she feels like she could haul off and knock him square in the jaw. But it passes, and a new idea forms. It’s desperate, but she’s never once pretended to be anything else.

Wordlessly, she discards her ratty old shawl and pulls her hair out of its net and pins. She watches his face for any sign of interest or even a sign of disgust. Mostly, he watches her with a kind of muted curiosity. Almost as if he wants to see how far she'll take this.

 _It's a start_ , she thinks.

She sits down on a pile of hay to remove her boots, and Ashley immediately kneels down next to her.

“Scarlett," he implores. "Why must you torment us like this? I know you're angry and hurt and confused, but you know this won't help.”

She looks up from her laces.

“Ashley, I want you. I want you like nothing and nobody I’ve ever wanted in my life before. More than I want my mother back, more than I want money or land or food, more than I want Rhett Butler. I want _you_ Ashley Wilkes, and if you don’t believe me then you don’t deserve me, and you certainly don't deserve to pass your name on to any baby!”

She hears the crack before she feels the sting of the slap across her face. Her eyes widen in shock. When she opens them again, she sees Ashley still has his palm raised, as if ready to strike her again if necessary. It takes him a moment to realize just what he's done. A horrible, terrible, foolish thing. His hand crumples like a wilted flower. She holds her inflamed cheek and tries not to let her tears fall.

“It seems I only have two ways within my power to silence your hurtful words,” he says, voice breaking. “I fear the result of trying the other way.”

“Other way?”

Before she quite knows what’s happening, Ashley's climbed on top of her. He's a warm, welcome weight, solid and good and strong. Of their own accord, her legs spread as Ashley's mouth claims hers in a sloppy, dirty kiss that she is sure will kill her. Yes, finally, finally! She can’t think or speak until the shock of Ashley pushing her skirts up is enough to bring her back to the reality of the situation.

“God, oh god, Ashley, I—”

“Hush,” he says curtly. “Don’t spoil this for yourself.”

Scarlett swallows hard and shuts her mouth. She didn't know he could be like this, so commanding. The dizzy sensations she’s feeling set the whole barn spinning.

He pulls away from her for a moment, and she watches in disbelief as he struggles to unbutton the front of his trousers. He holds himself in his palm, stroking himself from uninterested half-hardness into begrudging full-hardness. Scarlett blushes crimson.

Ashley settles back down between her thighs.

"This is what you want from me?" he wonders aloud, before pressing all the way inside her at once.

He hates himself with every fiber of his very being, but she feels as divine as he'd always imagined. It would have been much kinder if she'd shot him through the heart instead.

"Will this be enough, Scarlett? Will it ever be enough for you? Will I?" he murmurs in her ear and the side of her neck.

Scarlett bites down on her sleeve to keep anyone in the fields or in the house from hearing her. Oh, Ashley could be just as cruel as she was! Even kind, gentle Ashley could do such a wonderfully awful thing. As he thrusts into her over and over again, she can’t help but think of Melly, inside, knitting scarves for widows or something while her husband takes her “sister” in the barn. 

"You don't love me, darling. Lovers don't rut like animals in a barn."

Scarlett doesn’t even feel the wood floor or the hay beneath her. All that matters is that she can feel _him_.

“Oh, Ashley. Oh, Ashley, I do love you. I do. I do.”

Won't she ever stop saying those damnable words? He kisses her again until she feels like she’ll faint, and everything is completely glorious. Ashley bites her where her neck meets her shoulder, and it’s the tipping point for her. She tastes blood when she bites her cheek as she comes. And her contractions are just enough to bring Ashley over the edge with her. He grunts low in his throat like it pains him, and his seed rushes inside of her, ready to set a baby growing.

There's a few brief moments where all he can do is stare into her shining green eyes, panting heavily, barely able to hold himself up. Flushed and glowing like she is, it's hard to believe her capable of orchestrating all of this.

"There," he says dejectedly. "It's done."

Ashley pulls off and away from her with a grimace. There's a terrible mess when slides himself out of her. He's lucky he had his handkerchief. He tucks himself back into his trousers and does up the buttons. Scarlett observes all this and frowns.

“Ashley?”

He stands and looks down at her, disheveled and sleepy and, more than likely, sore.

 _You're just as responsible for this, you know_ , his conscience reminds him. It compels him to speak.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Scarlett.”

Her head cocks to the side like a puppy and her brows furrow. He’s suddenly reminded of just how very young, or perhaps naïve, she is. Or maybe it’s a sign that he’s not as noble and kind as he likes to think.

Scarlett closes her legs, sets her skirts to rights, and stands on shaky legs.

“What do you mean? Ashley, darling, you could never hurt me.”

He feels like a monster. There were things she shouldn’t have said, but slapping her and using her and abandoning his marriage vows were not forgivable. If only he could have died in battle, with some dignity, grace, and honor.

“Maybe it would be best if I left Tara after all,” he evades. “Maybe we’re both not suited to this kind of life.”

He watches her raspberry mouth quirk a small, sly smile.

“We can pack and leave as soon as we want, Ashley! Do you really mean it?”

His heart clenches. The saddest part of it all is that he does. How can he go back to Melly and polite society after what he’s done? He was no better than the rumors implied. Better to leave and keep the burden of hatred off of his darling wife and young son.

“Yes, we’ll leave tonight,” he answers miserably. “Go on to the house. I’ll be along soon.”

She stands on her toes to kiss his cheek.

“Ashley Wilkes, you've made me the happiest girl in all of Georgia.”

She dashes off towards the house like a child in the school yard, and he wonders how long it will be before she, too, regrets what they've just done.


End file.
